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What I did for beer today

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KingBubbaTruck said:
Completed my first brew in 12 years yesterday.

Today I bought some more camlock fittings, another pump, a big o ring for my plastic conical fermenter, some other odds and ends in order to get ready to do another brew on May 4th!

Welcome back. Why such a. Long hiatus? And why the return?
 
I can't really pin the hiatus on anything in particular. Just kind of stopped one day and other hobbies took over.

I've always been planning on getting back into it and started the process last august.

I have a bit of a get together scheduled in a couple of months so thought it would be nice to make up some beer for it.

Made 10 gallons all grain batch of a pale ale yesterday, will do up another 10 gallons of probably a lighter beer like a CAP for my guests.
 
Very basic recipe. I used pretty much the same recipe as my previous brew (12 years ago), except the LBHS didn't have 40l crystal, so I subbed in some 60l.

24# of 2 row pale malt, 2 pounds 60l crystal, .25# of chocolate. OG of 1063

About 73 ibu's of willamette and cascade hops. Now that I look at the ibu to og ratio, it appears I might be a little on the high side? All I know is that I based this off of the last recipe I made in my log book, and I actually backed down on the hops a bit from that. Never had any problem with me or my friends drinking it back then.

I had some old 1056, I'm ashamed to admit, that I bought last august when the bug to brew again first bit. I made a starter and stepped it up a couple of times on my stir plate. I had a nice little cake of yeast in the bottom of the gallon jug, so I decanted off most of the liquid, and swirled up the yeast cake to add into the fermentor. In a last minute panic, I also had a vial of white labs american ale yeast I bought at the same time as the 1056, so I cracked it open and dumped it in as well. It's not rocket surgery, right?

I'm thinking it will be a little dark for a pale ale. Guess that's part of the fun of brewing!

The whole brew day went pretty smooth. I'm thinking I had a little lower efficiency than I used to but no big deal.

Here's a link to a little timelapse I did of the brewday. Drank an Arrogant Bastard to make the whole thing go smooth...




The fermentation is going great right now.
 
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Checked my email which showed all my ingredients have been shipped! Hopefully it's here by Friday to brew on Saturday!
 
Went to the LHBS over lunch and bought a 50# sack of 2row, a bunch of specialty malts, way too much hops, and 3 different kinds of yeast.

Looks like I'll be brewing a porter this weekend, and a pilsner the next!

I say if anything is worth doing, it's worth overdoing. I'm going to get all my lonely empty kegs filled at one time if its the last thing I do!
 
- Steamed some French oak cubes and added them to a nice Bajan XO Rum for my Barleywine
- Brewed a Surly Bender clone
- Ordered the cacao nibs and vanilla beans to turn said Bender into a Moe's Bender
 
Missed the UPS guy with the brewing supplies by about 10 minutes. Oh well. I'll have everything tomorrow, and I won't be brewing until the weekend anyway.
 
Leadgolem said:
Missed the UPS guy with the brewing supplies by about 10 minutes. Oh well. I'll have everything tomorrow, and I won't be brewing until the weekend anyway.

When I miss the UPS guy I can go down to the distribution office after 8pm and pick my package up there.
 
Kegged 5 gal of Lemon Lime Hef, and 5 gal of Honey Nut Brown, and added a four port manifold and new lines to my keggerator. Upgraded my serving capacity from one to four. I only have three kegs for this weekend's cookout though... Looks like I need to get brewing!!!
 
Yelled at my wife. For the past month I've been brewing a beer with lemon peel and dry hopping and as soon I start transferring my beer from the secondary to the bottling bucket she walks in with a handful of lint from the dryer and starts breaking it sort as she throws it away. Needless to say my Boston Lemon IPA became Laundry Lint Beer. There went a month of work. So pissed! It smelled awesome! So pissed!!!!
 
blindmanbrew said:
Yelled at my wife. For the past month I've been brewing a beer with lemon peel and dry hopping and as soon I start transferring my beer from the secondary to the bottling bucket she walks in with a handful of lint from the dryer and starts breaking it sort as she throws it away. Needless to say my Boston Lemon IPA became Laundry Lint Beer. There went a month of work. So pissed! It smelled awesome! So pissed!!!!

Hey, that's what secondary's for! Dropping sediment.
 
a lot of cleaning !!! I also bought a 6 foot corian counter top with a back splash and l brackets to use as a brewing prep table... I cut out a opening and mounted my barley crusher in it as well as framed a basin catch to hold my mill bucket so I can crush at the table..... set up my instruments...... scales....lab..etc....I did all this in my brewhouse aka the garage my SWMBO wants to frigin kill me !!! I'm so happy !!
 
ong said:
Hey, that's what secondary's for! Dropping sediment.

Yeah, that and if you we're dry hopping your beer. It also allows it to condition better and makes a clearer beer.
 
installed "Brew Target" on my windows 8 computer (super glad it was compatible), updated all my recipes and ingredients. I still won't have any time to brew for another month but at least I can start to plan everything for a 2 batch session.
 
Checked my email which showed all my ingredients have been shipped! Hopefully it's here by Friday to brew on Saturday!

Looks like it'll arrive next Tuesday :/

I guess I'm going to go have to get more ingredients so I can brew on Saturday!
 
I ordered three new kegs, for my keezer project. Im excited to see this come together. Also, trying to finish my Mash tun/cooler project. I stupidly ordered random fittings, that don't fit together. Now Im having trouble trying to locate a SS 90* elbow 1/2" barb x 1/2" mpt.
 
Those bottles from the German Wernesgruner pils have cool crests on the neck & "original german beer" around the shoulder. so I saved 5 to re-use & 1 for the collection. Put a gallon of PBW in my lil cooler (the one in my brewery pics) & the labels slipped off clean in an hour. So I'm soaking them,& clean the ones I've been drinking mine out of.
Dang midwest is still 6 days behind with orders,might not get my supplies in time for Saturday. * Just found out my car's done! Hoorah!
**Correction,the Wernesgruner labels slip off in 30 minutes or less. Fast like Paulaner & Franziskaner.
 
image-1000251819.jpg

DIY wort chiller. Ain't to purty but she doesn't leak!
 
Yup! Like Han Solo,"she ain't to purty,but she's got it where it counts!". Wanna make a dual coil one of these days. got fix the kitchen up for momma 1st.
 
Dry hopped a batch of Wry Smile Rye IPA, picked up a 50 pound sack of Great Western Pale Malt (2-row) and a couple of packets of S-04, and cleaned out one of my swamp coolers so it will be ready for my next batch. Time for a homebrew.

Edit: Went to get a homebrew and found the only tapped keg was dead. Pretty sure a recent house guest was hitting it pretty hard last week in the evening after we went to bed, but also suspect the final straw was my oldest son (25) and his buddy earlier today while my wife and I were gone picking up a sack of pale malt. Sigh . . . today I also rinsed an empty keg and started it soaking with some Oxy, and began carbonating a keg of Da Yooper's House Pale Ale. Hopefully the IPA I put in there sometime last week is close to being fully carbonated by now.
 
Pulled a gravity sample from my IPA, and dry hopped with an ounce each of cascade and Citra. This ones gonna be good...
 
jerryteague said:
Pulled a gravity sample from my IPA, and dry hopped with an ounce each of cascade and Citra. This ones gonna be good...

They make a great combo together. I used citra and cascade exclusively in a pale ale recently and it came out great.
 
Registered 4 beers for a local comp (BURP's Spirit of Free Beer). Just gotta drop the entries off at the LHBS by tomorrow (due date).

Nice! I have 3 in the same comp and I'm dropping mine off at myLHBS tomorrow as well!
 
Ordered up 3 perlick taps with shanks and handles, a 3 way manifold, a drip tray, faucet wrench, and other goodies to properly convert my beer fridge to a 3 tap kegorator. Now I just need to pick up a 3rd keg...
 
Finally soaked my grain bag clean,rinsed & hung to dry. Got a bunch of cleaned bottles dry & boxed up. Cleaned & dried my home depot bucket to use with my new barley crusher grain mill. My Moari IPA will be in primary two weeks Sunday. One more week & it should be ready for a load of dry hops for a week before bottling. Can't wait to taste it...
 

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